Business leaders tweet less after lockdown: Report

With the new normal being visible even after the lockdown has been lifted, a Twitter analysis showed that top Indian business leaders and world leaders tweet less often now than they did during the lockdown period of March to June.

The latest analysis by Mint covers 13,233 tweets and retweets by a set of 10 Indian and 10 global business leaders in the five-month period from June 25 to November 24. According to the report, the number of average tweets per day fell for 16 of the 20 persons that were surveyed.

However, Anand Mahindra and Harsh Mariwala were the two exceptions among Indian businessmen, and Michael Bloomberg and Hans Vestberg in the global set.

Not just the tweets, even the traction that the tweets that business leaders received dropped in the same period. For Indian business leaders, it fell by 28 per cent, and for the global set, the retweets declined by 22 per cent.

Mint also examined the kind of tweets these leaders were making. During the lockdown, the coronavirus accounted for 20 per cent of the tweets by Indian leaders and 24 per cent by global. However, after the lockdown was lifted, it declined to 13 per cent for Indian leaders, and 18 per cent for the global set.

A notable point made in the report was that the 10 Indian leaders' tweets revolved much on the government policies during the post-lockdown period.

The business leaders have always kept away from giving their opinions on Twitter. This could be due to the criticism from the public. During the lockdown, the most retweeted tweets for these leaders were out of the socio-political context.